After three years in the making, the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Scottsdale’s newest site on the Tonalea Middle School campus is open and accepting kids.
The $10 million, 27,000-square-foot Steve and Maria Sanghi Boys and Girls Club opened Aug. 10.
“The first day we opened we had around 300 kids come down and take a look, and right now we’re working our way to having 200 of those kids coming each day,” Boys and Girls Club of Greater Scottsdale Chief Executive Officer Ivan Gilreath said.
The facility includes a 13,000-square-foot club made from a number of remodeled Tonalea buildings the school didn’t need when it switched from a K-8 school to a middle school serving just kids in sixth through eighth grade; a brand new 12,000-square-foot gymnasium and a 2,000-square-foot performing arts center — something no other Boys and Girls Clubs in Scottsdale have.
“The Boys and Girls Club is right here on our campus and it’s just so convenient for our students to be able to take advantage of all the resources that they have,” Tonalea Principal Robert Villa said.
The new facility features a maker space with 3D printers, an audio studio where kids can create podcasts, a gym — with equipment from Planet Fitness — and of course places to do homework.
“We also have a garden, which is an area where we’re going to teach kids how to grow food for themselves and how to prepare food,” Gilreath said. “That’s part of our healthy habits program.”
Any kid enrolled in Tonalea’s after-school program can use the facility for free.
“We’re a full Title I program here so all of our students receive free breakfast, free lunch as part of the program here,” Villa said.
And yes, the new club will also feed kids after school.
Other kids can go there, too, but there is a income-based fee.
There’s even a bus that brings kids from Tonalea’s feeder schools — Hohokam Elementary and Yavapai Elementary schools — to the facility after school.
Pima Elementary School also fed into Tonalea but was closed this school year as part of the phase I portion of a program to decrease the district’s footprint in light of a nationwide trend of declining enrollment at public schools and low state funding.
Gilreath said the idea for the new club was pitched to him by Scottsdale Unified School District Superintendent Dr. Scott Menzel around three years ago.
“He knew he had this extra space that he wasn’t going to be utilizing, and he had a need for his kids from this school to have somewhere to go because after school they were just hanging out on the school grounds and hanging out at the Circle K,” Gilreath said. “They were just doing other things that kids shouldn’t do between 3 and 6 p.m.”
Gilreath then took the idea to his board of directors.
“The mission of the Boys and Girls Club is to be there for kids who need us the most, and my board was unanimous in that we should go there and serve those kids,” he said.
So that’s when Gilreath and others launched a fundraising campaign and paid for the entire facility through donations.
“No taxpayer money (was used),” Gilreath said. “It was all donations from people who care about this community.”
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J. Graber
News Editor | Scottsdale
Meet J.
Graber joined Independent Newsmedia, Inc., USA, in February 2023, starting his career as a staff writer covering the City of Scottsdale and was named news editor of the Scottsdale Independent in 2024.
Community: He serves on the altar guild as well as being an usher at St. Mathews Episcopal Church in Chandler.
Education: He earned his BA in creative writing with a minor in journalism from the University of Arizona. He then earned an MS in Mass Communications from the University of Oregon.
Random Fact: He enjoys reading novels by Russian authors.
Hobbies: Playing classical guitar, reading, fishing, going to the gym, watching sports and spending time with his family.
Keywords
Scottsdale Unified School District,
Boys and Girls Club of Greater Arizona,
Tonalea Middle School